Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday February 10, 2013 @09:25AM
from the why-waste-such-a-valuable-resource dept.

McGruber writes "The Federal Times, a weekly print newspaper published by Gamnett Government Media Corp, is reporting that the Rapiscan Systems 'backscatter' passenger screening machines used by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration will likely be redeployed to federal buildings. Rapiscan System's backscatter machines have exposed passengers to radiation since they were first installed. As previously reported on Slashdot, TSA decided last month to stop using the machines because the manufacturer was unable to make changes to the machines that were mandated by Congress. Now TSA is attempting to sucker another federal agency into taking the nude-o-scopes."

Of course, you realize that the Congressmen would simply exempt themselves from using these scanners (of course, not due to any negative health effects this machines certainly don't have, but because it would take up too much of their valuable time that is better spent selflessly serving their country). The only people that would be subjected to these scanners would be the tourists and school kids coming in for a tour or to watch a congressional session.

It makes sense... I work in a government building that is also a tourist attraction. Every day I scan my ID card and breeze through the turnstiles while children, old ladies, and lawyers/lobbyists have to queue up and go through the X-Ray machines. I always smirk when I pass a group of lawyers... yeah they may be getting paid $50/minute and have a suit that cost more than my car but they still gotta take off their belt and surrender their precious cell phones like everyone else...

I work in a government building that is also a tourist attraction. Every day I scan my ID card and breeze through the turnstiles while children, old ladies, and lawyers/lobbyists have to queue up and go through the X-Ray machines.

So, what you're saying here is that you're a Soviet mole who's taken the time to establish bona fides, and one of these days you're gonna slide right into said building and cause horrible mayhem?

While I'm joking about you personally (I'd feel really bad for a few minutes if you got tooken off to Gitmo on the basis of this post), it just shows once again how pointless the fundamental security approaches in place are.

Congress members are already exempt from security screening at the Capitol and their other office buildings. See here [wikipedia.org] for a relevant funny story, if your definition of funny includes a *headdesk* and general despair for the country and the human race in general.

The TSA folks have apparently been passing around X-ray porn for a while, in spite of official claims that the machines don't support it. And the standard images of the naked TSA official that they keep putting in press releases are low-res newspaper-quality versions, not the full resolution that the actual operators can see if they want.

People enlisting in the armed services traditionally have gone through preliminary indoctrination / induction procedures in federal buildings. A lot of vital statistics stuff is found in federal buildings. FBI offices, ATF offices, federal marshall's offices, and more. The Federal Building in Oklahoma City that was bombed was targeted because the ATF and FBI were located there. Few, if any, of those various federal employees had anything to do with approval of these machines.

Worse, the public is still being exposed to this crap.

Congress needs to just mandate that the damned things are destroyed. End of story.

Congress really ought to just grow some balls, and decide to get rid of TSA and Homeland Security. I've seen nothing to suggest that they have improved on security in the United States. Fund the border patrol, and allow them to do the jobs they have been mandated to do since day one. And, Customs, as well. Keep the Air Marshalls, but put them under the authority of the FBI.

We've gone so horribly wrong, and Homeland Security is the center of all that wrongness.

I was hoping that they could go into prisons instead of being destroyed. But only prisoners and their scumbag visitors have to. Go through them. Prison staff and lawyers get safe ones when they need to be screened. Actually scratch that, send the lawyers through the back scatter too.

If you were paying attention a decade or two ago, Federal court buildings and many state and local court buildings all got metal detectors in a big hurry after some judge got shot by somebody who didn't like a decision they'd made.

Among odds and ends I found were a "federal building and post office", and several "federal building and federal court". The Pentagon and the US Supreme Court are both federal buildings. It seems that my own definition wasn't very accurate - even some warehouses are classified as federal buildings!

Oops... I thought they were both being taken out of commission... so if I were to travel to the US I'd still have the choice between increased cancer risks and being felt up? (I'm not rich enough to avoid the procedure.)

Unless you need to enter a federal building, you get the choice between the "enhanced patdown" and a non-ionising nude scanner (for now, another company may reintroduce backscatter x-ray scanners in the future, since Rapiscan's scanners were only removed for bureaucratic reasons).

Well as I said it's non ionising, but the jury is still out on the long term effects of THz radiation... so patdown it would be, assuming I'd still chose to travel to the US despite it's governments hostility to visitors (and it's own population).

if I were to travel to the US I'd still have the choice between increased cancer risks and being felt up?

If you're going to be regularly felt up, you might end up feeling bad because of it. Feeling bad compromises the immunity system in measurable ways, and that increases the risk of getting cancer. So you have the choice between getting cancer in the surface areas of your body, and getting it practically anywhere.

The primary risk is that the radiation is concentrated at the skin, but the "safety" studies the TSA was claiming to have used assumed that it's spread out through the body. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for doing an honest risk assessment. And because they were able to take them out of use because they didn't have a censorship feature, they didn't have to address that, but if they get deployed in Federal buildings, they might have to face serious challenges that they can't deflect by saying "Terro

But it's somebody else's budget. THAT is the point... TSA gets their money back, manager gets prompted. Another Federal agency gets TOLD to buy these and sticks the bill.

This is where we have no laws against such contempt... Congress told one agency to certify the safety risks. They know it will fail, but Congress didn't rule on the MACHINES themselves so just move the machines somewhere else..

People responsible need to go to jail for contempt of Congress. Best thing about contempt is that they don't have

Your truly important rights will disappear in the loss of the rights protected by the 2nd amendment. Don't believe it? What will YOU do when they pass a law that allows them to arrest you for no reason? Oh wait, they already have. OK, what will YOU do when they pass a law that allows them to pass judgement on you and execute you without a trial? Oh... ermm... they did that too.

OK, what will you do when they tell you that you have to worship a religion not of your choosing? Or that you aren't allowed to b

Your truly important rights will disappear in the loss of the rights protected by the 2nd amendment. Don't believe it? What will YOU do when they pass a law that allows them to arrest you for no reason? Oh wait, they already have. OK, what will YOU do when they pass a law that allows them to pass judgement on you and execute you without a trial? Oh... ermm... they did that too.

OK, what will you do when they tell you that you have to worship a religion not of your choosing? Or that you aren't allowed to bitch about what a shitty government we have? Or that you can't say the president is a douchebag?

The whole point to the 2nd Amendment is that it gives the people the ability to defend their unalienable rights if need be. Its not about hunting or sporting clays as our current leadership would have plebs like you believe. Its to give the people the ability to cast down a tyrannical government if ever the need arises.

This is what Americans actually believe.

Good luck taking down an armed military with your plinkers, if they actually WANT to get rid of you. Or they could, you know, keep doing the slow-boil that they've been doing for years. That seems to be working pretty well - as you already note yourself. Why fight them when you can just make them agree with you?

Good luck taking down an armed military with your plinkers, if they actually WANT to get rid of you. Or they could, you know, keep doing the slow-boil that they've been doing for years. That seems to be working pretty well - as you already note yourself. Why fight them when you can just make them agree with you?

The question becomes whether the members of the US armed forces are actually willing to turn their weapons on their neighbors, coworkers or friends? It's one thing to be deployed to a different country in a distant land against a population that differs from you in ethnicity, beliefs, etc. The brainwashing needed there is fairly low level, of the patriotic sort. To view large groups of people from your own country, your own neighborhood, your own church as a mortal enemy that needs to die takes things to

The question becomes whether the members of the US armed forces are actually willing to turn their weapons on their neighbors, coworkers or friends? It's one thing to be deployed to a different country in a distant land against a population that differs from you in ethnicity, beliefs, etc. The brainwashing needed there is fairly low level, of the patriotic sort. To view large groups of people from your own country, your own neighborhood, your own church as a mortal enemy that needs to die takes things to a whole different level.

I'd say that police and military will step in to stop what they consider crazies with guns hurting those other people with the same ethnicity, beliefs etc. as well, even if there isn't a us and them they will invent one to cope with shooting at them. That both the north and south were Americans hardly stopped the Civil War, nor would it stop people shooing each other now. Both democracy and the law has to become extremely corrupted before the people who believe they are defending democracy, law and order sw

American democracy is far more powerful to effect change than that Colt.45 under your pillow ever will be. Why will we see immigration reform in the USA in the next four years? Because Latinos vote. Why has the Republican party gone loony? Because Tea Partiers vote. Why is weed legal in Washington state? Because of the vote. If you want your rights back stop buying guns and start unelecting the people who are taking them away, and make it clear why you are unelecting them.

American democracy is far more powerful to effect change than that Colt.45 under your pillow ever will be.

Look back a few decades to the VietNam war. A bunch of peasants armed with AK-47s and Pungi sticks routed two Superpowers (first France, then the USA) armed with tanks, jet fighters, B-52s, Air Cavalry, & etc. Look at the US today. The DHS is terrified of shoe bombers. The FBI is manufacturing plots with willing dupes.

That voting box is looking pretty pathetic these days, and more so every passing day. When your front runners are Obama and Romney, or Clinton and Palin, it's not working.

OK, what will YOU do when they pass a law that allows them to pass judgement on you and execute you without a trial? Oh... ermm... they did that too.

I don't know if that makes it better or worse -- but they have _not_ passed a law that allows them to execute you without a trial.

What they did, was to write a secret memo that explains why that have that right already. Then they wrote a summary of the secret memo which they just released. They may already be executing people without a trial, but the law allowing this is yet to pass.

Your truly important rights will disappear in the loss of the rights protected by the 2nd amendment. Don't believe it? What will YOU do when they pass a law that allows them to arrest you for no reason? Oh wait, they already have. OK, what will YOU do when they pass a law that allows them to pass judgement on you and execute you without a trial? Oh... ermm... they did that too.

So since they have passed all those laws, I guess the 2nd Amendment is basically useless as a mechanism for protecting your fundamental rights.

Whereas here in Canada, where we have moderate gun control (virtually no legal handguns, rifles and shotguns require licensing and training), we have considerably better legal protections against arbitrary arrest than you do in the US.

It's almost like there is something else--like a functional government that actually represents a broad range of people--that is prote

FYI, calling people "sheep" is the easiest way to cause everyone to ignore what you're saying.

Not really, a grammar error will do just fine. The laser-like focus on the misplaced comma will incite a half dozen threads about the Oxford Manual of Style, totally obscuring any point the thread had to make.

In the land of the free and the home of the brave, people are so afraid terrorist attack, they have decided to give up their own liberty (and possibly their health) in exchange for (a possibly false sense of) security.

Short version: the dosimetric standard used by the company to claim these devices are safe assumes that the incoming x-rays are absorbed uniformly over the whole body, but in fact they are primarily absorbed in the skin. The skin dose is therefore much higher than the meaningless and irrelevant "whole body dose" that the dosimetric rig used measures.

The measurement is actually the same either way. It's just measuring total dose, regardless of how that dose is distributed (that's total quantity of radiation, not per voume). That's perfectly fine if you happen to know how the dose is distributed (or if it doesn't matter). Based on data for X-rays of that frequency, it's easy to work out the dose distribution in a human with respect to skin depth. IIRC, the skin region gets about two orders of magnitude higher dose per unit volume than if the radiation wa

That isn't relevant to my statement at all. TSA claimed NIST somehow vouched for the things, but NIST has stated the opposite emphatically.

As to your claim, that has also been debunked. The radiation from the flight mostly passes through without an interaction. That which does interact does so through the entire volume of your body, spreading the dose.

In contrast, the X-Rays from the backscatter device all interact at a very shallow depth (necessarily), so the dose is confined to the volume near the surface

You apparently don't know the difference between radiation flux and radiation dose. Dose, by definition, takes into account the interaction (or lack thereof) with matter, where a lower interaction rate for a given flux will result in a lower dose. In addition, the dose units "REM" and "Sieverts" also take into account the different biological effects of different radiation - a given energy deposition in tissue from neutrons will have a higher dose than a given energy deposition from gamma rays.

If I'm confused, so are a large number of concerned radiologists, oncologists, and physicists. Google is your friend.

If they were THAT attenuated before they hit the skin, they wouldn't be able to produce the objectionable images they are so well known for.

It is the TSA that is confused about dose vs. amount of energy thrown at something. They looked at the energy, compared it to the energy of background radiation and naively said, cool! It's safer than mother's milk. Had THEY taken actual dose and biologic

By the time the X-ray beam goes through the plastic wall between the source and the person being scanned, the X-rays with energies low enough to have significant photo-electric interactions with the primary elements of skin, namely H, C, N & O will have been attenuated. That leaves Rayleigh or Compton scattering for the primary interaction. Keep in mind that the cross-section for 180 degree Compton scattering is fairly constant to close to 50 keV, requiring Z's to be in the mid-20's for significant phot

Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary, has spent years explicitly pushing [washingtonpost.com] Rapiscan in airports. His security consulting agency includes a client that makes the machines.

Not only are these scanners a very expensive waste of money as they fail to detect what they're supposed to detect, they're also a health hazard. Please stop this overpriced security theater and use the resources to actively prevent wannabe-terrorists from becoming the real thing. That's much more effective on every level. I mean even if the scanners actually work, what's to prevent a terrorist from setting off a bomb in the queue of people waiting to be scanned...? - By removing the terrorist of course. i.

It's pretty amusing watching people freak out over these things and call them nude-o-scopes and similar. Just like with gun-control laws, I don't care a lot about the underlying issue, but it's so tempting to take a stance just because the NRA folk are so bloody nuts.

The NRA folks are nuts? It's the gun grabbers who are calling to lock people away in jail for owning a rifle with scary parts, or for owning a sheet metal box with a spring in it.

None of the pro-gun folks want to send *you* to jail for being a douche, after all.

Why do you fear and hate your tax-paying, law-abiding neighbors so much that you want to see them spend hard time in jail for owning a gun?

None of the pro-gun folks want to send *you* to jail for being a douche, after all.

So long as we're going to resort to generalities...

No, they would just rather project your right to confront and shoot kids for the heinous crime of playing their music too loud (or the even more heinous crime of wearing a hoodie in rainy weather while carrying a can of iced tea).

It's the gun grabbers who are calling to lock people away in jail for owning a rifle with scary parts

Even though I'm fairly liberal, I see little reason to believe bringing back the assault weapons ban will make a significant difference in gun deaths -- it would probably be somewhere well south of a 1% difference. So I'm not out arguing that the ban should be brought back.

However, every time someone says that the only difference between assault weapons and regular weapons is that the former look scary, I have to ask: Why are such guns so popular if that is the case? Do you realize you are implying that

Because there's a strong correlation between "looks scary" and "good ergonomics". 1950s vegetable peelers worked, but a quarter-inch-thick round handle was hard for everyone to use, and impossible for the old or arthritic to use. 1950s shotguns worked, but you had to adapt to the tool - if you were rich, you had an obscure English gunsmith make one to fit you; if you weren't, you made do with what the manufacturer thought was going to be popular. By using a separate pistol grip and an adjustable stock,

I think you are probably right on two points at once. "Assault weapons" look scary because they look like military weapons (which of course are associated more with killing people that the average hunting rifle) and military weapons look the way they do because of ergonomics. It's much easier to effectively use a highly ergonomic weapon in a high pressure situation, be it combat or a mass shooting. That is more than simply a cosmetic difference like some people claim, though.

I'm pretty sure any attempt at banning semiautomatic firearms will make things worse. There aren't many gun nuts out there who would resist a ban with violence, but a ban is usually proposed in the context of reducing a vanishingly rare kind of crime. Even if we assume only a percent of a percent of a percent of American gun owners - one in a million - take it badly, (I have no idea how accurate that is; let's just pretend) one must remember there's slightly more civilian-owned firearms than citizens. Le

Strongly related is weight: a modern AR weighs considerably less than an M1 and a fair bit less than an M14 (and less than your average 30 06 or 308, and less powerful to boot). This makes it easier/better for my girlfriend and son to shoot.

There is one guy on a gun board I frequent who has fused wrists. The pistol grip on modern sporting rifles is almost mandatory for him to be able to shoot at all. I think he might consider an ADA claim if pistol grips are banned in my state.

While I understand that argument, I consider the point void if it's accompanied by an increase in home invasions involving gangs of about a half dozen men armed with machetes and nail bats who don't particularly care if the homeowners are home, who don't like leaving witnesses, and can be certain that there won't be any effective armed resistance. I'm frequently disappointed by those on both sides of this argument who assume there's never unintended consequences. And we can test for that using statistics,

You are massively confusing two distinct issues. The Second Amendment is about a well-regulate militia. The Fourth Amendment is for reasonable search and seizure. Objecting to backscatter X-rays is, unlike the gun nuts, defended by classical readings of the Fourth Amendment. That's aside from the serious issue of exposing people to radiation with minimal safety precautions. Moreover, doing this with federal buildings would be a lot worse. You can at least have other alternatives to flying (long car travel, train travel, boat travel). But when one needs to go do something at a federal agency one doesn't have any options.

No, it's not. Just like the 4th prohibits the government from searching the people the 2nd prohibits disarming the people. You get the lowest level of freedom you accept: you probably support NYC stop-and-frisk because you are scared of guns, so stop resisting government control and relax.

Stop and frisk is covered as not ok under the 4th Amendment. It has nothing to do with whether or not I'm scared of guns. As to the second Amendment it specifically starts with the phrase "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State". It is the only Amendment with a preamble explaining its purpose.

A misunderstood purpose, too. "Well regulated" did not mean "pass a whole bunch of pain in the ass rules about" like it does now. It meant "well skilled" or "well practiced". The point being that you could't be good with weapons if you didn't have any to be good with. "Militia" meant "anybody who is physically able to fight when needed". That we now have one thing the founders most decidedly did NOT want, a massive standing military force, does not take away from what the second amendment is all about.

Ugh. You're taking a phrase that used to be mean "disciplined" put into the constitution to specifically say "not a bunch of yokels with guns" and yet the NRA (and you) have decided to interpret it as "yes, a bunch of yokels with guns." Then you go on to say that what the second amendment was explicitly about, the security of a free state, is not actually what the second amendment was about. Brilliant.

Not to disagree but wouldn't a militia of that sort require a state and federal structure similar to the National Guard?

Not sure, but even at the time of the Civil War, it was highly likely to find armies arranged by state, not necessarily at a federal level. (I know I'm ignoring the bulk of your comment that addresses the current military, but I was just looking at the basic issue at the time the 2a was ratified).

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.

In my non-expert opinion the militia "preamble" is sort of relict of the language describing the right to be a conscientious objector. But, let's leave the quibbling over language to lawyers. The question is whether citizens should be considered too irresponsible to defend themselves, and the government should have an absolute monopoly on force. People on the left think so, though they are often reluctant to explicitly present their beliefs. Maybe becaus

Yes, and historically definitions were closer to 1 than others. This isn't "shenanigans" but is the consensus of most law professors, linguists and others. The militias were official organizations under the state governors which eventually became what we call today the National Guard. Definition 4 is particularly egregiously modern and not relevant, and 3 just doesn't make sense in context.

No it isn't. I don't know where you are getting this information. There is a reason Jefferson said at the time, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." That quote was said in support of Shay's rebellion, which was a paramilitary group regarding themselves as defenders of individual rights against interference of the government. There was some debate at the time, because not everyone supported Shay's rebellion. John Adams was worried that without cen

Ok. So egregious is probably too strong a wording in this context. But most of your quotes aren't at all relevant to the matter in question. First, you've (again) completely ignored the phrase "well-regulated". Second, the Webster quote, nor the Henry quote, nor the Jefferson mention the word militia. Also, trying to use Patrick Henry as evidence in this sort of situation is particularly strange given that Henry was an anti-Federalist who opposed the Constitution. So generic remarks by him simply don't matt